The Human Family

"The Human Family" is the first complete translation of the cycle of ten novellas that Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) wrote between 1895 and 1898. This collection contributes to the rediscovery of Andreas-Salome's significance as a thinker and writer, above all with regard to her literary contributi [...]
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"The Human Family" is the first complete translation of the cycle of ten novellas that Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) wrote between 1895 and 1898. This collection contributes to the rediscovery of Andreas-Salome's significance as a thinker and writer, above all with regard to her literary contribution to modern feminism and the principles of women's emancipation. Born in St. Petersburg to a German diplomat and his wife, Andreas-Salome has always been a figure of interest because of her close relationships to influential thinkers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud. Only since the mid-1980s, however, have her prose fiction and theoretical writings been reconsidered as important documents of emerging ideas and debates in twentieth-century feminism. The ten stories of "The Human Family" drive home her critical perspective on feminine stereotypes. They depict a wide variety of young women as they relate to men representing different degrees of enlightenment and tolerance, struggling to express a complete and independent feminine identity in the face of the confining but often seductive roles that convention and tradition impose on female potential."The Human Family" provides a subtle and nuanced perspective on European feminist writing from the turn of the last century by a woman writer who was intimately involved with the literary mainstream of her time and whose theoretical and literary works played a significant role in feminist debates of the period, prefiguring present-day feminist discourse on essentialism and constructivism. Raleigh Whitinger is a professor of German at the University of Alberta. He is the author of "Johannes Schlaf and German Naturalist Drama" and the translator of Eduard Morike's novel "Nolten the Painter: A Novella in Two Parts."